More recent is the problem of the immigration of people representing all the nationalities of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. While until late in the second half of the nineteenth century the immigrants consisted almost entirely of people of northwestern Europe, natives of Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and France, the composition of the immigrant masses has changed completely since that time. With the economic development of Germany, German immigration has dwindled down; while at the same time Italians, the various Slavic peoples of Austria, Russia, and the Balkan Peninsula, Hungarians, Roumanians, East European Hebrews, not to mention the numerous other nationalities, have arrived in ever increasing numbers. There is no doubt that these people of eastern and southern Europe represent physical types distinct from the physical type of northwestern Europe; and it is clear, even to the most casual observer, that their present social standards differ fundamentally from our own. Since the number of new arrivals may be counted in normal years by hundreds of thousands, the question may well be asked, What will be the result of this influx of types distinct from our own, if it is to continue for a considerable length of time? It is often claimed that the phenomenon of mixture presented in the United States is unique; that a similar intermixture has never occurred before in the world’s history; and that our nation is destined to become what some writers choose to term a “mongrel” nation in a sense that has never been equalled anywhere. When we try to analyze the phenomenon in greater detail, and in the fight of our knowledge of conditions in Europe as well as in other continents, this view does not seem to me tenable. In speaking of European types, we are accustomed to consider them as, comparatively speaking, pure stocks. It is easy to show that this view is erroneous. It is only necessary to look at a map illustrating the racial types of any European country—like Italy, for instance—to see that local divergence is the characteristic feature, uniformity of type the exception. Thus Dr. Ridolfo Livi, in his fundamental investigations on the anthropology of Italy, has shown that the types of the extreme north and of the extreme south are quite distinct,—the former tall, short-headed, with a considerable sprinkling of blond and blue-eyed individuals; the latter short, long-headed, and remarkably dark. The transition from one type to the other is, on the whole, quite gradual; but, like isolated islands, distinct types occur here and there. The region of Lucca in Tuscany, and the district of Naples, are examples of this kind, which may be explained as due to the survival of an older stock, to the intrusion of new types, or to a peculiar influence of environment.